Bamboo Garden — Restaurant in Luang Prabang

I know it’s common in asia for restaurant to limit the spice and flavour of food for shire people. In Laos I specifically learnt how to ask for my food spicy in the Lao language so they would believe that i wanted it spicy and my food came out pretty bland and flavourless. I wish they didn’t tone down the flavours for white people. Go to any less fancy looking place and they will load you up with fish sauce and chillies.

this place is good for picky eaters.

When i edit this review the owners response will be deleted so i have copied it here:

“Dear Braden,

Thank you for sharing your experience with us! We apologize that our food flavor didn't meet your spicy flavor expectation, but that should not be a big deal, and you should not rate our place 2* just because of spicy or not spicy flavor because you could ask for more sliced chili pepper on your dish side anyway! As per our local family business experience, you are one of a few demanding customers from many thousands valuable customers that we have ever had since we started our business in 2017! However, we appreciated your time supporting our local family-run restaurant!

Best Regards, Oudone & Yai (Owners)”

I will admit when i wrote this review i was frustrated and left out some details. What made this incident specifically frustrating was that i had gone back and forth with the waitress asking for the food to be spicy. When we received the food there was zero trace of spice, so incident 1 was not being believed.

As the owners said, i could have easily asked for more chillies. I did think of this, however it took ages to get the attention of our waitress. In food service (from experience in the industry) one of the most important components of good service is a quality check (QC) that should be performed in roughly 2 minutes or the time take it’s the guest to take 2 bites of their food, what ever comes first. During this QC the waitress has the opportunity to make sure the guest is satisfied and doesn’t need anything (salt, soy sauce, extra chillies, side of rice, etc). The waitress didn’t seem to care if everything was came out of the kitchen as requested and it took a while to get her attention, so that was incident 2. Anyways, after finally getting the waitresses attention we asked for some fresh chillies, specified we would probably need a health amount between he two of us, she laughed and agreed. Not sure what was funny about that. We were brought maybe 1.5 sliced chillies. We decided it wasn’t worth it for us to ask again to try and eat spicy food. Incident 3 was her doubling down on her decision to not care about our request.

3 incidents 3 lost stars. I review everywhere honestly from my experience and unfortunately cannot give everyone 5 stars just because they think my review was unfair. Based on some of the other bad reviews i’ve read, it seems like ensuring your waitress perform quality checks after the food arrives and the guests table could prevent further...

The vegetarian Pad Thai contained chicken. After explaining the owner that I don’t eat chicken, he tried to convince me that it was egg or tofu while he clearly could see that it was chicken. I left when he got angry. Here I’ll write an update after the respons of the owner. Indeed I had the shrimp pad thai. What I meant to say is that I don’t eat meat, and so chicken. While I was eating I saw some peaces of chicken. I told the owner that I don’t eat chicken and he tried to convince me that it was egg. When I told and showed him that it was not the structure of egg, he tried to convince me that it was tofu. I showed him again that is was chicken. He had to agree it was chicken and there was no any apologize or solution. The only thing he told me with an angry voice was that it was the first time since 2017. He walked away and let me sitting for a while before he started talking from over a distance that I had to pay 50% for the part that I had eaten. After being rude again, I decided to leave.

I’m traveling for years and sometimes it happen that there is meat in my dish. That’s something that can happen. We are all human beings and a mistake kan happen. A solution can be to apologize for the inconvenience and serve another plate, or at least ask what a good solution can be for me. It’s the first time that I decided to leave without paying, because of the behavior if the owner. Usually there is always a solution what works for the...

Coming here requires quite a bit of a walk if you're coming in from the old town area. Helmed by three women, the food here is affordable and delicious. I started my meal with the Luang Prabang sausage (25k). While the portion seems small, the sausage was very good. It is unlike any of the Western sausages I have tried. It also comes served with some chilli paste, which will change the taste of the dish. The mixed vegetables (25k) were fragrant. The oyster sauce smell was very strong, and the vegetables were all coated with the sauce. I also liked the variety of vegetables in this dish. The star of my meal was the chicken stew (30k). This dish is flavoured with dill, lemongrass and basil, and comes with egg plants. This wholesome dish was slightly peppery and taste of it was uniquely good.

Edit: came here for a second visit and I received a warm welcome. I had the Khaiphaen (20k), and this was amazingly good on its own. Not too salty. You can make it taste better with the chilli paste that comes with the Luang Prabang sausage. I also had the pork laarb (35k) and this was good. Very fragrant and with...